Irmin Don’t we fall into this trap as well. By the time I’ve tweak the reverb, perfectly placed my monitors, bought the right vst, agonised for days about correctly weighted action with a wooden feel and lovely pivot length, new versions of the previous are out and I need to do it all over again and little time is spent making music.
Maybe. Let me share my experience.
I have a nice grand piano which I love and use only to make music, without any of the above. Before I got that, I owned two other acoustic pianos (not at the same time) with which I somewhat fell in similar trap, in that I didn't like this or that and I constantly tried to "fix" it (mostly by asking my piano technician). On the acoustic side, that has stopped.
On the digital, I've never been completely satisfied, but I feel I've made progress (like I did on the digital). I hope my DIY will settle me on the action and amplification side of things, and that a such point I can settle on a virtual instrument too and be done with it.
Regarding the time spent making music, I agree that we almost never talk about it. Occasionally @CyberGene and @David B post something that they play, but it's rare and I don't think I've seen anyone else doing the same (I might have missed the posting). Plus, I've never seen a lively conversation about those posting, at most some comments. I think part of the reason is that it's difficult for the poster to put themselves "out there" for the judgement. And the other part is that others may not want to offend the efforts of the player with hard comments. Given that this forum was born with the idea that "everything is allowed and nothing is banned" (within reasons and human decency), perhaps we can all grow "thick enough skins" and do both of these?
Perhaps we should force ourselves to do otherwise, such as, for each technical post (e.g. pivot length of such and such action) there must be a corresponding musical post (of me playing such and such piece) and people should comment on that too with the same frequency. Let me start that and see how it goes!